Voice Study Centre becomes Associate College

The Voice Study Centre (VSC) is looking to grow after linking up with the Department of Language and Linguistics and becoming an associate college of the University of Essex.

VSC is now offering a two-year MA Voice Pedagogy pathway accredited by the University of Essex as the next stage of its growth strategy. The two-year part-time online MA will be available from October with a full-time online MA course available in 2025.

At the moment VSC, based at East Bergholt just across the Essex/Suffolk border, has 230 students enrolled on its MA programme across 32 countries. It hopes to increase student number as part of the the new validation partnership with the University.

Head of the Department of Language and Linguistics Professor Tracey Costley said: “We are delighted to welcome colleagues and students from VSC to the University of Essex and are excited about this new validation partnership.

“I am really struck by the excellent quality of work taking place at VSC and the many areas of overlap and potential for myself and colleagues within the Department of Language and Linguistics to work with colleagues and students from VSC.

“As a department, we share many points of interest with colleagues at VSC and I look forward to the next steps and to the exciting work we will be able to do together”

There is the potential to extend the partnership to include research collaborations and their are potential synergies between speech and song, communication, music, pedagogy, language and linguistics. Essex has a world-leading reputation for research and is first in the UK for research impact in modern languages and linguistics.

Fully online and available to study internationally, the two-year MA Voice Pedagogy is a structured taught pathway that facilitates a deep understanding of the what, the why, and the how of voice teaching and training.

It is suitable for singing teachers, voice teachers, performance coaches, and other health professionals who work with voice within a professional context.

Students will engage with a range of voice-related theories and practices to develop a critically informed approach to working. The course balances academic research with practical application, beginning with a thorough grounding of Voice Pedagogy and culminating in a dissertation.

It is hoped that some Centre students will choose to progress to PhD study in relevant fields at Essex.

The Centre also offers an “Introduction to Academic Skills: Pre-Course” to facilitate widening participation to the MA programmes at no extra cost, for students who do not meet the standard entry requirements for direct entry. This initiative aims to overcome inequality regarding access to education within the voice industry. The University has approved the Pre-Course as an articulation route to the MA Voice Pedagogy course for students with non-standard entry requirements.